In January 2012, the city council of S. João da Madeira launched an Industrial Tourism project, financed by ON.2, consisting of a set of industrial tourist circuits. Through visiting different manufacturing units in the county, the project aimed to combine the preservation of the city’s industrial archaeological legacy with the promotion of both industries considered traditional and the new creative and technological industries.
Having achieved a prominent place at the national level, affirming itself as a reference project for other municipalities, the Industrial Tourism initiative now aims to extend its circuits to new companies in the county. The municipality is also coordinating the working group for the creation of the Standard of Quality of Industrial Tourism in Portugal, integrated in a technical committee presided over by Turismo de Portugal.
The Creative Industrial tourism project aims to create a set of Routes of Experience in order to complement the offer of visits to the local industrial heritage and to the live industry already promoted by the Industrial Tourism of S. João da Madeira since 2012. Inspired by models of collaborative participation, this initiative aims to provide tourists an opportunity to experience the daily life of a locality marked by industry, where a solid industrial fabric joins the technological and creative industries within a culturally and artistically rich environment. The Routes of Experience will be organized in four segments - Creativity, Gastronomy, Art, and Industry - providing tourists a series of workshops and experiences, sharing experiences, and building relationships between places and visitors.
Creative industrial tourism
Activities/Workshops:
Industrial Experience
On this route, visitors will have at their disposal a set of workshop-experiences that give them a chance to live a day as an industrial worker. Learn how to make a pencil, cut the molds in skin to make a shoe, listen to stories of life from individuals with life-long experiences of being hatter, or lunch in a factory canteen - these are just some of the experiences accessible to all. Offered in the companies of the Industrial Tourism of S. João da Madeira, the workshops allow learning and experimentation with the various steps of the production processes associated with the pencil, shoe, felt for hats, ribbons, labels, and mattresses!
Location: S. João da Madeira Date: to announce
Creativity Experience
Expanding beyond the factory experience workshops in the traditional industrial sites (the Industrial Experiences) we will also engage with the creative and technological industries, providing workshop-experiences in some of the companies within Oliva Creative Factory, one of the most recent workspaces of the city, representative of the diversification of the economic fabric of an industrial city. In close contact with the areas of graphic design, fashion design, ICT, performing arts, visual arts, urban crafts, and jewelery, tourists will have the opportunity to share a work day with some of the city's youngest entrepreneurs.
Location: S. João da Madeira Date: to announce
Gastronomic Experience
The Gastronomic Experience is closely linked to both gastronomy and creativity, rooted in the innovative capacity of the city's residents.
"If the essence lacks, you work the shape."
It’s an experience that aims to stimulate the municipality of S. João da Madeira by promoting it through cooperation between the various economic agents and local tourism and cultural promotion, recovering, preserving, and promoting local identity by associating it with gastronomy.
Nowadays, the city is known for its creativity and innovation with a past linked to the footwear and headwear industries, and this initiative offers an original experience testing the creativity of each individual, providing an action that gains form and flavour.
Location: S. João da Madeira Date: to announce
Art Experience
For a measure of creativity, it can be said that another equal or more of art and culture is needed. We’re more creative when immersed in a cultural and artistically stimulating environment. In this sense, the objective of the Art Experience is to provide tourists with the opportunity to receive inspiring cultural and artistic inputs, which are also a daily mark of this industrial city. But beyond simple spectators, this experience will also give them access to participate in local contexts of artistic and museological creation.
Location: S. João da Madeira Date: to announce
Language(s) available for the workshop(s): Português | Inglês
For more information / Contact:
Website: http://turismoindustrial.cm-sjm.pt/
Email: turismoindustrial@cm-sjm.pt